


How Long Have I Known You?

by Commander_Freddy



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Bickering, Bittersweet, M/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-08
Updated: 2013-03-08
Packaged: 2017-12-04 17:01:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/713023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Commander_Freddy/pseuds/Commander_Freddy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How long is forever to the oldest beings in the world?</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Long Have I Known You?

Meetings were nothing to Arthur Kirkland. He had lived through centuries-worth of strategic planning, diplomatic bickering and passive-aggressive arguments on topical subjects. The modern discussion tables high up in the governmental skyscrapers were no different to a cluster of important knights gathered in a medieval throne room, no matter what everyone tried to claim. Humanity had bickered before it had even started cultivating crops and Arthur knew it would continue to do so into infinity.

 

Francis was waiting for him at the end of the end of the meeting, of course. They _were_ in Lyon.

 

“Care to join me?” he asked, casually leaning against his car.

 

Inside, Arthur smiled. But on the outside, an eyebrow rose whilst the other sunk and he said “And why would I trust you?”

 

“How long have I known you?” Francis replied flawlessly.

 

What a well-worn phrase. If it had been a book read each time they said it, the pages would be musty and yellow with age, the spine cracked and ink faded. Tea would stain pages and edges would be burnt by cigarettes. There were bound to be crumbs gathered in the spine and the damn thing would never close properly. It had probably been used to flatten things, act as a coaster and mouse pad, and would always sit on piles of junk, never a shelf. All the same, the two could never stop reading it.

 

“Your apartment?” Arthur asked as he slid into the passenger seat. He had sat in the same spot so many times we was certain the leather had been pressed enough to form a perfect mould of his buttocks.

 

“I was thinking we could go to the villa instead,” said Francis, starting the car. He turned to look slyly at Arthur. “Is that alright with you?”

 

Arthur made some ineloquent grunt and gazed half-heartedly at his watch. “I don’t care in the slightest. You know that.”

 

Francis exhaled softly, the beginnings of a laugh on his breath. “I sure do.”

 

Francis’s villa was somewhere in the middle of the south-eastern French countryside. Arthur had never been sure of the exact location; he just knew he had to fly into either Lyon or Grenoble if he wanted to spend the weekend with Francis there. He noted with only minimal interest that he hadn’t been there in very long. Not that anything to do with time really concerned Arthur. Once you reach your second millennium, anything shorter than a decade seems to be too short to bother measuring.

 

Some point along the drive, about the time the mountains in the distance started to grow much clearer, Francis took one arm from the wheel to play with Arthur’s hair.

 

“Shouldn’t you be focusing on the road or something?” asked Arthur, not even looking away from the window.

 

“Didn’t you have a meeting with your brothers or something?” countered Francis, who smiled when he elicited a snort from Arthur. “That’s quiet rebellious of you.” The snort turned into a quick chuckle.

 

“You know perfectly well that no-one actually shows up to those things.” Arthur exhaled slowly and relaxed as he felt Francis’s hands run through his blonde hair. “And I thought you said my naval piercing was what you found rebellious in me.”

 

Francis laughed. “I’m allowed to think more than one aspect of you is rebellious, mon petit lapin.”

 

“I am not a rabbit,’ Arthur replied automatically. This had been his response to the nickname since the first time Francis had called him that. Arthur couldn’t even remember the first time he had been called a little rabbit, though. He guessed it must have started when the two were very young, and it probably had something to do with the little rabbit Arthur had lugged around during the low middle-ages.

 

“I still don’t know why you kept the piercing so long after your punk faze.” Arthur didn’t even blink at Francis’s glossing-over of his objection.

 

“Never know when you could use a naval piercing,” said Arthur absently, noting with some regret that Francis’s hand had left his hair so the other nation could handle a curve in the road more competently.

 

“I have never known you to need a naval piercing in my life,” said Francis, “and how long have I known you?”

 

“Well you like it,” said Arthur with a quick quirk of his magnificent eyebrows. There was that phrase again, _how long have you known me?_ Arthur began to wonder when they had started using it. How long had been long enough to class as forever? The phrase had appeared at the millennium celebrations, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the trenches of World War 2 and World War 1. Arthur still got chills when he remembered Francis whispering it to him in some tent at the tail-end of some Napoleonic battle. They’d shouted it across islands as they raced around the Pacific, colonising everything they found. There had been a telegram from Australia to Morocco containing those very words, and another from Niger to New Zealand.

 

Francis chuckled at his comment and once again took his hand from the wheel, this time to gently stroke Arthur’s face.

 

“How long do we get the villa?” Arthur asked, deliberately keeping his voice disinterested and trying not to give away how much he liked the stroking.

 

“Gosh you’re impatient,” chided Francis. “It’s only a two-hour-or-so drive.”

 

“You’re one to talk,” said Arthur, letting his suppressed scoff seep into his voice. “You spent the entirety of that Canadian road trip complaining how we were never getting anywhere.”

 

“I was bored!” Francis replied. “There was nothing to do, nothing to see!”

 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about; Canada is quite pretty.”

 

“Yes he is,” said Francis, smug smile on his face. “It’s the hair – he gets it from me.”

 

Arthur rolled his eyes and turned back to the window. “I knew that was coming,” he muttered.

 

“Of course you did. How long have you known me?”

 

Arthur wondered if Francis thought about the phrase as much as he did. If not as frequently, then occasionally at the very least. They said it so often it had to provoke some thought. In fact, Arthur guessed it was Francis himself who said it most often. Was the continuous use brought about by frequent thought on the matter, or a pre-existing understanding? Arthur couldn’t imagine that Francis knew everything there was to know about that saying. Indeed, he couldn’t imagine anyone understanding it fully. After all, who could truly understand a saying that had been whispered in the back rooms of palaces of fledgling empires, shouted from galley to galley, and joked over in countless overly-formal court dinners?

 

They arrived at the villa in due time, by which point the sun was beginning to drip below the nearby alpine mountains. Arthur relaxed against Francis on the large sofa in the sitting room, internally debating as to whether or not to get up and make a cup of tea, when the phrase slipped out again. This time, he was the one who said it.

 

“Do you ever think about that?” he asked, his large brows knitting together.

 

“Think about what?” asked Francis in turn, his voice rather absent and his eyes clouded with daydreams.

 

“That phrase – our phrase.” He paused for reaction. “You know, _how long have you known me?_ ” he prompted when no reaction was given.

 

“Sometimes,” said Francis. His voice was off somehow and it annoyed Arthur that he couldn’t figure out in what way.

 

“Don’t you just wonder-”

 

“I’m going outside,” said Francis hurriedly.

 

“Hey I was just…” Arthur trailed off as Francis rushed to the back door and stepped out onto the porch. “Hey!”

 

Trying not to make too many stiff old man noises, Arthur rose form his spot on the couch and followed Francis outside. He found the other man standing on the porch, one hand grasping a cigarette and the other the railing.

 

“Francis, what’s gotten into you?” asked Arthur, annoyed at how cross he sounded. “Is everything alright?” he hoped his voice was softer for the second question.

 

Francis took a deep breath and gave a small smile when Arthur moved forward and rested his hand on the one on the railing.

 

“I’m sorry for storming out on you like that, Arthur.”

 

“That isn’t an answer to my question; give me a clear one so I can help you, dammit!”

 

Francis laughed, if in a rather bittersweet manner. “Your anger is flattering, mon petit lapin.” When no protests to Arthur’s status as a rabbit arrived, he sighed again. “I do think about our saying sometimes. Often. Always.”

 

Arthur gently rubbed Francis’s hand beneath his own and waited for the other to continue. It was a moment before he realised Francis was crying.

 

“What’s-?” he began, but Francis quickly brushed him off.

 

“No, no. None of that.”

 

Arthur forced his voice to grow gentler. “What’s wrong?” Francis just looked away.

 

He began to lead Francis back inside, taking the other’s cigarette and tramping it underfoot on their way through the door. Francis’s tears could really more accurately be called a slight leakage, as they appeared in small numbers and only briefly. Still, all that mattered to Arthur was they had been there once, and once was too much. Not quite sure what to do with his distressed Frenchman, he ended up leading Francis into the small bedroom and seating him on the edge of the bed.

 

“Arthur,” said Francis quietly, turning to look at Arthur as he sat down beside him. “Just think for a moment. How long have I known you?”

 

Arthur prepared to provide a quick retort, but stopped when he truly saw Francis’s face. It was an upset face, sure, but it was far more than that. To everyone – civilians, his boss and even the other nations – it was the face of a man in his mid-twenties who had something deep on his mind. But it was actually so much more. Francis’s face was _ancient_. It had seen so much, felt the sting of swords and guns alike, and been kissed countless times by so many people.

 

_How long have I known you?_

 

How old was Francis’s face, truly? Arthur knew he was several hundred years younger than that face, but together their faces made a deeply-matched pair. How do you measure the true age of a face, anyway? How do you measure all the horrors those blue eyes have absorbed, count the times the corners of the mouth creased in a smile, or know how many winds have brushed the hair off that countenance? And come to think of it, how old was Francis himself? He seemed to be some sort of universal constant to Arthur.

 

_How long have I known you?_

Francis was there, laughing at him, during the War of the Roses. Francis had stood opposite him on the battlefields of the Hundred Years War. Francis had always been there. Fighting over the newly discovered American nations, starving with him during the Great Famine, those two boys who had committed cardinal sins in holy cities had been through everything, and through everything with each other.

 

_How long have I known you?_

 

Was it possible for two people to have known each other for as long as Francis and Arthur had? How many encounters of the past had been forgotten by Arthur’s ancient memory, how many times had Francis actually been there for him? It was there and then that Arthur truly realised his life would be completely different without Francis. Without Francis, there was no Arthur.

 

_How long have I known you?_

 

“I have no idea.” Arthur smiled and even gave a tiny laugh. “How could I ever know how long we’ve known each other? You knew me before I even knew myself.”

 

He turned to Francis and the smile slowly dripped off his face as he saw the other was still sitting with downward eyes and solemn mouth.

 

“Yes.” Arthur only barely heard Francis’s reply. “But how long _will_ I know you?”

 

Arthur took a deep breath and put a hand on Francis’s knee. “I don’t know. Nobody knows. It’s best not to dwell on things like this.”

 

“So you know it as well,” said Francis, slowly turning to meet eyes with Arthur. “You know it can’t go on forever. Every nation has its days. Some get years or centuries. We already have millennia.”

 

Arthur gave a small smile. “Others have lasted longer than us. Egypt’s mother had three thousand years.”

 

“Egypt’s mother is gone. Long gone.”

 

“Yes, but China’s _four_ thousand and still going today.”

 

Francis sighed. “China is alone. How many people do you think he’s had to see die? How many of _us_? Nations? How long could we possibly have left, Arthur? The world is changing at the speed of light and we don’t even know how long we’ve had.”

 

Arthur was silent for a moment and Francis slumped once more. But then Arthur grasped his hand and started speaking haltingly. “I don’t know how long we have left. I don’t know how long we have had. I don’t understand time at all. You could tell me we’ve been sitting here for five years and I would accept it straight away. But I know we’re not going down with a fight. Whenever our time is over, whenever the world no longer has room for us, _we will know_. And then we will prepare. I don’t know if we will ever know exactly how long we’ve been in each other’s lives. I don’t even know if I want to find out. But it’s been a bloody long time and even though I’d be lying if I said I loved every moment, I wouldn’t trade a second of it away. We are not a measurement of time. We are the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and Républic française. We are Francis Bonnefoy and Arthur Kirkland. I have no idea what that entails, but I know I like it.”

 

A smile started to spread its way across Francis’s face. As Arthur returned it, Francis took his head in his hands and gently planted a kiss on the smile. But something was still wrong, Arthur could feel it.

 

Sensing Arthur’s inquisitiveness, Francis released him and began to explain. “But we will die one day. And one of us before the other.” He paused. “Probably.”

 

Arthur sat still, only breathing, for quite a while. “You’re right,” he said eventually. “We’re immortal, not eternal. But whoever dies first will just have to wait for the other to cross over later, I suppose.”

 

“Do you really think that will work?” asked Francis, his tone and expression incongruently playful. “We’ll just wait on the edge of heaven for the other to die?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Oh Arthur. How could you be so certain?”

 

“Oh Francis,” said Arthur, his mimicry drawing a small but genuine smile. “How long have you known me?”

**Author's Note:**

> This was just a little plotbunny I had to write out. It's not very good, I know! :)


End file.
